Age of Heroes Read Online Free

be writing about Tierra del Fuego in this one. He had fans, a small core of devoted followers, some of whom travelled to the places he recommended. He couldn’t let those people down, could he? He had to give them something , even if it wasn’t much.
    So...
    Ushuaia is a city of contrasts. The capital of Tierra del Fuego, it nestles at the foot of the snow-capped Martial Mountains and boasts a thriving port and some excellent restaurants. But it’s also unfinished-looking and in parts primitive, littered with low, drab buildings that have a Swiss-chalet feel to them but are otherwise architecturally unremarkable. Industrial zones sprawl towards a rugged, wild coastline. Tepid summers give way to bracing winters, the typical climate of subpolar latitudes. Founded by British missionaries, Ushuaia is now staunchly Argentinian, as evidenced by the Malvinas War Memorial occupying a plaza downtown next to –
    “Is that a MacBook Pro?”
    Anthony stopped typing, glanced round.
    The stranger at the adjacent table waved a hand apologetically. “Sorry, mate. Rude of me. I’m a nosy bastard. Just ignore me.”
    “No, it’s okay,” said Anthony. “Glad of the interruption. You a Brit?”
    “English, yeah. You a Yank?”
    “Kind of. More like a citizen of the world.”
    “You sound a bit Yank.”
    “Don’t all citizens of the world? Brave of you, though, coming here, if I may say. An Englishman. They’re not fond of your country in Ushuaia.”
    The Englishman shrugged. “I’m a big boy. I can handle myself.” He motioned at the laptop. “You a blogger or something?”
    “Travel writer.”
    “Oh. Cool. Must pay all right.”
    “Why?”
    “Well, I couldn’t help noticing the hardware, could I? Third gen, right? Fifteen-inch Retina display. Flash storage. Extended battery life. Yours looks like a top-spec model, too. I’d love to be able to afford one of those.”
    They chatted about MacBooks for a while, and about portable computers more generally, and then the conversation strayed to Anglo-Argentinian relations, the Top Gear incident, the Falklands, broadening out from there into a sweeping discussion of geopolitics. The stranger’s name was Roy Young, and he was intelligent and engaging company. He had clearly travelled himself, although not to the extent that Anthony had – but then no one had to the extent that Anthony had. He was lithe and well-proportioned, early thirties, in good physical condition, with close-cropped hair that suggested military service at some point in his past. He had come to Ushuaia to ski, he said. It was early June and the season hadn’t officially started, but snow had already fallen and he had heard there was already good powder up on Mount Krund. He planned to head up to the Cerro Castor resort in the next couple of days and try out the slopes there. Anthony admitted that he did a bit of skiing himself from time to time and had been toying with the idea of visiting Cerro Castor.
    Young bought a round of beers, which endeared him further to Anthony, and as the afternoon shaded into evening the two men grew ever friendlier. They ate dinner together at the bar – sausage casserole, spicy fried potatoes, chicken fajitas, rounds of smoked cheese – and at some point Anthony found himself agreeing to accompany Young on a trip aboard the Tren del Fin del Mundo, the narrow-gauge steam railway that ran from Ushuaia into the Tierra del Fuego National Park. It was a horribly touristy thing to do, but then Anthony was a travel writer. Wasn’t he supposed to do horribly touristy things and report back about them? Wasn’t that the whole point?
     
     
    A CCORDINGLY, HE AND Young met up the next morning, took a taxi out to the “End of the World” station, and were soon trundling along in a little carriage with large windows, hauled by a puffing locomotive, through a rolling, snow-bleached landscape. The train wended its way along Pico Valley, halted at the Cascada de le Macarena station,